In optical electronics, photo-detected optical pulse energy is converted to a voltage signal through conversion circuits such as transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs). This type of conversion has found applications in high speed high resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), free space optical communications, coherent optical communications and the like.
In a typical conversion process, pulses generated by a photodiode are converted from current pulses into voltage pulses prior to quantization. As data rates increase, the frequency of the pulses increases accordingly, and it is becoming more difficult to accurately measure the peak energy associated with each pulse when the frequency approaches or exceeds a certain level.